Originally Posted by rygreen
For all those from the "It was bad tactics" school of thought, I have this to say:
If the chase had been put on at the beginning, the bunch quickly would have been reduced to a handful of riders because of the tempo that Landis was riding. More and more would have been shelled on the successive climbs, with few or none getting back on the descents because of Landis' kamikaze downhilling. By the last climb the only rider that might have been left with Landis would have been Sastre. All the other contenders would have long since cracked and would have been losing major time.
The other teams are lucky they didn't try to go with Landis at the beginning, because they couldn't have known he was going to be able to put out that ridiculous an amount of power for that long. They would have royally screwed themselves.
I'm not sure of this. Let me give another idea. They ALL chase and catch Floyd. (There are some problems with this as the peleton is best in flats and near flats which there were not very much of til just before the final climb where they did take 2 minutes out of him). But let us say they did and Floyd eventually gave up or burned out. The other riders want YELLOW not 2nd or 3rd. No one is happy except Pereiro who now is in great shape as it is doubtful that others would have put any time on him if his team had not been forced to work.
For anyone going out with Landis remember that Landis was pretty far down. The other contenders were willing to play chicken on who would chase how hard for him. If someone who was only 2 minutes down to the yellow the chase would be very serious as soon as the escape was 2 minutes ahead. A contender catching his would have been disaster for Floyd. He would be in a no win situation. He would either end up towing that rider to the Yellow or caught by the group. Floyds most likely responce would have been to ease up and try again later.